In a way, I think the folks who look at the iPad and fixate on the M1 being overpowered for the OS must have short memories. The 2018 iPad Pro’s A12X was similarly powerful for it’s time, as was the 2017’s A10X and the 2015’s A9X. Really, the trend goes back at least as far as the iPad Air 2 (A8X). It’s pretty clear that Apple’s goal for iPadOS/iOS on iPad has never been “max out the hardware” but to create an experience that Apple thinks is optimal for the form factor and market.
7 Likes
And having them overpowered works well. Our house has an iPad Air 2 and a 2017 iPad Pro 12.9 and they both work well for their roles*. I imagine in 2024 the M1 iPad Pro will still be powerful enough for most uses.
*That said I still want to upgrade, I just can’t really justify it since the iPad was my “in person meetings machine” and I’m not sure enough will go back to in person to justify.
1 Like
I used a Lenovo ThinkPad tablet PC circa 2006. Something like:
It was running Windows XP or Windows Vista, and I had more flexibility with it than I do my iPad Pro.
That’s the problem here. Obviously, Apple’s hardware has long eclipsed the Thinkpad I used in 2006. So, Apple’s decision to constrain the software is just that: a decision. Apple has kept the iPad simple deliberately. And that would be perfectly fine if they didn’t call it a Pro device and try to convince people it’s a laptop replacement.
The worst part is that this has kinda worked well for Apple. People like me—and @MacSparky, John Gruber, and Myke Hurley, according to recent episodes of their respective podcasts—buy into the iPad, even if only to struggle with it in a sad kind of Stockholm Syndrome. If the iPad was a Mac replacement, we might not buy both.
I do think the OS is getting somewhere, albeit slowly. I think I can see how iPadOS will be a dream in 2030 or 2040. But goodness do I ever wish I could run macOS on a Surface.
5 Likes
@macsparky ´s thinking at the end of the WWDC episode on the iPad I think captures the gist of this journey. It was very interesting to hear him come to terms with the fact that this device is never going to be what he hopes and now that MacBooks are insanely powerful with huge battery life, maybe it’s not worth trying to force the platform into what it’s clearly never going to be. The iPad is a great device for many people who do productive things. And they love it. But it’s not, and will probably never be on equal footing with a Mac - Apple does not show signs that it’s the intent. It remains « the device in between » touted by Steve Jobs.
But at the same time, many people do not care about text expansion, complex windowing, complex file management, multi screen setups etc. I agree with MacSparky when he says maybe it’s time to let the fight against the platform rest. Use an iPad if you like and it suits you. Otherwise, get a Mac. Personally, that’s what I’m going to do, and use my iPad for handwriting notes and content consumption - two things it’s stellar at. But there’s a Smart Keyboard going to the marketplace at some point.
5 Likes
There are a ton of people for whom it’s a perfectly fine laptop replacement. I don’t think Apple needs to wait for the iPad Pro to be able to replace a laptop for absolutely everyone before they start marketing it as such for the people who’s needs it will fill just fine.
4 Likes
I’m taking a slightly different route, having also at one time tried to replace the MBP with the iPad. Due to the nature of my work I am in a better position to do so than those with more technical needs.
I would still be inclined to use the iPad for ~90% of my work if the battery life on the MBP was still around 4-6 hours. But with the M1’s battery life of 8-10 hours and its speed, I’m reallocating my work flow between the two devices. Having also settled on my apps of choice (I experimented with and struggled between using Obsidian and Craft but have settled on Craft) here are my basic apps and device utilization.
iPad Usage
- My travel device (I’ve started traveling again, finally)
- Writing when the focus is the text, not research (Scrivener)
- Speaking notes when making presentations (all of my speaking notes are prepared and reside in Scrivener, which works great for speaking notes when in Focus mode)
- Book reading (Kindle app)
- Reading the news (Apple News)
- PDF annotations (PDFPen Pro)
- Meeting notes (Craft)
- Weekly review (OmniFocus)
- Email (Apple Mail)
MBP
- Spreadsheets, budgets, etc. (Excel, Numbers)
- Writing research and complex writing projects (Scrivener, DEVONthink)
- Citation Management (Bookends)
- File management, conversion, OCR, etc
- File backups (Blaze and Time Machine)
- Brainstorming (MindNode)
- Email (Apple Mail)
- Project/task management (OmniFocus)
- Formal paper/proposal development (Word or Pages)
- Slide development (Keynote)
Now, what I will have to decide this fall is whether to stick with the 12.9" iPad or go with the 11". I prefer the smaller size (presentations, meeting notes) but when traveling I prefer the 12.9" because it is functioning as my laptop replacement.
3 Likes
My problem is few sites cogently articulated what exact features they needed in iPadOS 15 to truly make it a Pro device worthy of the M1.
I don’t consider rants about Multitasking to be very valid with mobile devices as they are constrained by RAM limits and batteries something their desktop equivalents on AC have a decided advantage.
I see the iPad as what it’s always been for heavier workflows. An auxiliary device for Macs. To add a Jobs’ism…we still Trucks and the iPad is simply not a Truck.
Apple has essentially won the Tablet wars. Samsung doesn’t really care about the Galaxy Tablets and Amazon chucks out cheap Kindle Fires every couple of years. The high end market is Apple’s.
Notice that Tim Cook never says “We view that iPad as the clearest expression of computing” anymore. Apple doesn’t advertise “What’s a Computer?” Ads anymore.
They finally realize they don’t have to pit the two lines against each other anymore.
The IPad Pro will eventually sync up the features with the power but as I’ve said in other threads they’re not just going to deliver iPad versions of the Pro Apps and call it a day.
I haven’t paid for a FCP and Logic Pro update in almost 10 years. I’m guessing that Pro Apps on iOS are gong to come with a monetized lure. (ICloud Pro?)
1 Like
Unless I’m mis-remembering, Apple also markets the entry-level iPad (and of course, by extension, the Pro) as a laptop replacement. Which it is, for the vast majority of people who just need a computing device for Internet, email, some “goofing around” type stuff, etc.
If we start with that as the base marketing claim, then “Pro” makes more sense given Apple’s naming convention.
The base iPad is a useful consumer laptop replacement. The iPad Pro is everything the base iPad is, with more processing power, better sound, a fancier screen, more memory, etc. Owing to the fact that more advanced users are more likely to want things like a keyboard and such, they make those things available as first-party accessories.
I’m not saying iPadOS is where it should ultimately be. But I also don’t think Apple markets the iPad Pro + keyboard / trackpad as a drop-in replacement for a MacBook Pro. And making the “Pro” name carry all that freight - solely by comparison across product lines - doesn’t seem fair.
I think iPadOS will probably iterate to the point where the extra RAM is available to apps, some background multitasking is possible, etc. But to @MacSparky’s statement about letting the fight rest, I tend to agree.
iOS / iPadOS and macOS are designed from the same code base, but they have fundamentally different security models. And a lot of the features we have gotten (third-party keyboards, etc.) are carefully carved-out, significant exceptions to that security model.
As somebody who writes code for a significant portion of my living, I find it highly likely that unless the underlying goal of the platform changes (notably including the sandboxing / process isolation aspects), there are always going to be significant gripes for people who insist that an iPad do everything a Mac can.
2 Likes
I have both an M1 Mac and the latest M1 iPad Pro and I love both of them. I know I’m lucky to be able to afford both, so if I had to choose only one, I would definitely choose the Mac. It is the most capable, powerful computer. I consider my iPad as an adjunct to the Mac. It’s more portable, lighter to carry around, the only thing I take on a trip where I don’t have to do my job (software development), but I never think it is going to replace my Mac.
It is also my main device for browsing the web and watching video/TV. Even though I have a big TV in the basement, sometimes I just want to lie back on the couch or bed and watch a video on my iPad. I think is this also superior for reading books and magazines/PDFs. I use the Apple Pencil to highlight and scribble notes.
So each device has it’s place and I don’t know why that is such a problem. I live in a semi-rural town and there are plenty of people who have both a pickup-truck and a sedan. I don’t see many discussions about, I wish my sedan could carry heavier loads like my pickup truck. The engine is powerful enough, why can’t Toyota give the Camry more carrying power?
4 Likes
I’ve also come around to this perspective and your illusion is a good one. I have a truck AND a SUV. They serve different purposes. They have crossover capabilities, they get me from point A to point B, but they have their areas of specialization. Job’s nailed it.
2 Likes
For me, I wanted to press it more at least in part so I could talk about it on the show and demonstrate “the way” to let the iPad be the computer for more people. I wrote a post a few weeks back about observing how much my kids enjoy using iPad within its constraints in comparison to me, who was, frankly, trying to use it for more than it is really engineered to do (particularly with software). So I’ve eased off a bit. I’m not throwing my iPad out the window but I am instead using an 11" exclusively (the 2018 model that has been passed around the house.) My oldest daughter is in graduate school and will be student teaching here shortly, so I sold my 12.9" to Apple in exchange for a new iPad Air (with a new battery) for her.
I’ll still be using the iPad for work. But I don’t plan on fighting it so hard for the immediate future.
5 Likes
The car analogy is not really adequate. The M1 iPad Pro (sedan) has the same hardware capability as the M1 Mac (truck), but the extra power is just locked artificially (just regarding the RAM limit). It’s not okay to lock out capabilities advertised on the spec sheet.
Apple just released this adv. they still promote the iPad as a computer
2 Likes
Man I gotta start doing better searches. It’s probably a good thing that I keep missing on these because it means I’m not watching broadcast TV which is a beautiful thing.
1 Like
I still want to know how the “What’s a computer” girl closed her iPad with a flick of her wrist.
1 Like
Coolest move ever!
I’ve managed to do that with the smart keyboard folio from the 2018, but haven’t had the opportunity to try it on the smart keyboard from the 2017 model.
The trick is to make knock the support “triangle” on a surface.
Think of it this way, iPadOS is built on top of Darwin which is a variant of UNIX. It has all the capabilities of UNIX for example grep, ssh, bash, etc. I use these tools every day on my Mac and couldn’t do my job without them. But they purposely hid all those powerful tools away because they have a steep learning curve and would turn off the vast majority of iPad users. Would the iPad be more powerful if they gave users a Terminal app and unleashed the full power of Unix? Sure, but it would also make it much more complicated.
So it is always a question of where they are going to draw the line between the full power under the hood and what the hardware is capable of and how to make it a user friendly portable device.
2 Likes
I get the sentiment where the iPad is just supposed to be a user friendly (aka handicapped) machine. But did the Terminal make the Mac a user unfriendly machine in any way? Non-power users just won’t ever touch it. In fact I’d argue it made Mac more user friendly for power users.
Would you argue the same if Mac is treated the same way where the hardware is obviously handicapped by some artificial constraints? Would you be totally okay if Apple sold you a Mac with 16GB of RAM but limited the usable amount to 5GB for no good reason, other than making every app “user friendly”, or maintaining consistency with less powerful machines? What about limiting the amount of storage usable to 1/3 of what you bought?
Every argument like this is almost certainly from people who don’t use the iPad as the main machine and treat iPad as a companion to the Mac. I just have to disagree when Apple is obviously marketing the iPad as an independent or even a replacement for Mac.
2 Likes
Regarding the artificial constraints, do you think the iPad would currently be able to use all the RAM if they just removed some constraint they’d programmed in? Or do you think there would be potential stability issues?
Given that other article that was linked previously, talking about “crashing” when trying to allocate more RAM than allowable, I’m thinking that raising the RAM limit is a feature that’s almost certainly coming soon - but there’s OS-level stuff they’re probably working on in order to get the experience working better before they remove it.
It could be argued that they should’ve gotten that right before releasing the hardware, but Apple is a publicly-traded company, and they need periodic “wins” in the press.
I think “M1 in the iPad” is a solid “win”. Delaying that until they can say “removed the RAM ceiling for apps” - which is something very, very few people care about - wouldn’t make sense, PR-wise.
But ultimately it’s an important feature, and honestly it’s a silly limitation from the consumer POV - which is where you’re coming from. If we’re here next year and they haven’t managed to address the RAM issue I’ll be disappointed. But I’m expecting some sort of point release where they address stability issues from RAM allocation, and bump the limit.
2 Likes
If Apple didn’t advertise the amount of RAM available, I’d think this limitation would be perfectly acceptable like 2018 models. It’s the fact that they specifically marketed the 1TB+ models have 16GB RAM that make the situation a bit problematic.
I agree very few actually care about the 5GB limitation. But those very few people are very likely to be the ones buying the 16GB models. The limitation is actually substantial for those who need the extra RAM in pro apps like LumaFusion or Procreate.
I’m not sure if lifting the limit would pose stability concerns. I think Apple never explicitly specified how much RAM an app is allowed. The only way to tell is when the system is crashing third party apps. It could be the case where iPadOS is just incapable of allocating more RAM but I doubt it.